Wii and encouraging fitness?

if you can get hold of a copy of nintendo the official magazine feb 08 issue in the uk there is a few pages regarding the calories burned playing wii sports ( the mag is the one with the lightsaber from starwars on the front cover)try that, that might help you further

as you said, a lot of schools have got involved into putting wiis in their class for fitness, i had one in my school the other day and it was really fun, but why don't you make your own experiment, it would sound great when read out.

for example, why don't you have a week where you eat the same diet that you usually do, while doing or nothing, or even better, playing the playstation or xbox (any one of them). measure how much you weighed before and after. then, get the weight you were after, and start eating the same diet the next week,but with about half an hour to an hour of gameplay on wii sports (possibly the more enrgetic games, such as tennis and boxing). then, measure how much you weigh after the experiment, but remember try to imitate exactly what you did the last week as closely as possible. See the difference

thoigh, if there is no difference, increase the time i.e a month (if you have that big amount of time), increase participants i.e get 10 people to do it, varying weight and lifestyles, or simply retake the test. I believe this will get an excellent result and, if not, just get the results from people answering here, or even better devise a questionaire and ask people in your street or people you know, and ask how they feel with the wii in their lives (obviously if they have one).

hope this helps

Not sure if this would be helpful or not but have you considered looking into Wii fitness material as it relates to the elderly? There has been a lot in the news here in AZ about how nursing homes and hospitals are using the Wii to encourage seniors to get active and how it is also helping with depression, as lots of them are homebound or limited in their mobility. (i.e., one of the examples was a bowling group - one nursing home had teams, much like a regular bowling league, but obviously they meet in a common area, not at a bowling alley). Don't have any concrete written data to give you but perhaps you would know where to get it. Good luck to you! Sounds interesting!

Really? really?... Look the Wii Fit game just recently released and that will in some time give lots of people time to do "research" on it Nintendo claims to have done some already proving it can make you loose weight, but that isn't science it's publicity.

I think I read somewhere that you only use 60 calories more per hour while playing the wii than playing an ordinary video game, its just moving your arms instead of running around

All I know if i play boxing i'm exausted by the time i'm ready to quit. And I am in shape, that means sweathing and aerobic type of workout. It wouldnt suprise me that this could help you loose weight if you actually play the sport game daily. As a mininum it gets your heart rate up.

Ir read this article on yahoo how these people were recovering from a sickness or in the hospital and they played the wii to stay fit

Try reading these stories

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/05/11...

http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/hughes/12610

http://in.tech.yahoo.com/071206/137/6o508.html